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I have been through the selection process for about a dozen California police departments including Sunnyvale, Menlo Park, Marina and Capitola. R. Justin Freeman is right that there is no formal process that eliminates candidates of high intelligence. I never encountered an intelligence bias (and I'm sort of intelligent.)Nearly every city starts with an application process like any job, at which point a college G.P.A. would be available to the recruiter. The application process is very formal and usually involves no personalized cover letter or essay, so very little opportunity to evaluate intelligence at that stage.Those who survive the application process are subject to a series of steps that might include:Written exams to determine knowledge, SAT-styleBackground check to bring to the surface previous criminal and other undesirable behavior (a LOT of people wash out here)Physical agility test including things like running, rope climbing, lifting, carrying and running with a sandbag simulating a humanOne-on-one psychological evaluation by a licensed practitionerOral board with police officers, citizens, etc.Steps 4 and 5 are where intelligence (and other behavioral attributes) are tested. The oral board is generally composed of an assortment of people, perhaps one or two police officers (maybe a patrolman and a sergeant), an official representative of the city (a councilperson for example), and an "average citizen" maybe. The board asks questions of the candidate and produces a psychological profile based on responses.Oral board questions are often ethical ones, such as "You and another officer are called to a liquor store that has an alarm going off. You find the back door open, go in to investigate, and your partner takes a roll of Lifesavers off the counter, opens it, and eats one. What do you do?" If you're dumb enough to respond that a pack of candy is very minor and you wouldn't report your partner, you are then asked, "OK, now, similar situation, only this time it's an audio store, and your partner picks up a TV and carries it back to the car."Some oral boards contain an additional component and may be referred to as "stress orals." I was on one board where a police officer said, "I don't like you, Postman. You know why? You're stoop-shouldered and you're too quiet." I responded, "I'm sorry to hear that. We hardly know each other. I'm sure once you get to know me you'll like me." It must have been the right answer since I made it through the process and was put on an eligibility list.Maybe this answer is too long, but I felt an understanding of the process would help respond to the question of discrimination on the basis of intelligence. To the contrary, my experience is that the process selects for high intelligence, except when that high intelligence might manifest itself in arrogance or an attitude of superiority or knowing more than the examiners during the psychological exam or oral board.

There is so much good stuff to learning from consulting. Here are the top 30+ things I would recommend learning. . . links to blog posts. Hope helpful.Hypothesis-based consulting: guessing the answers to client problems (09/26/12)What we call hypothesis-based consulting, some cynics call educated guessing. Either way, it is a smart way to break down complex or ambiguous problems, and quickly start driving towards an answer. Hypotheses start early in the process, go broad at first, but then get narrowed down quickly. It can be unnerving to some clients, but it works.Why do consultants use PowerPoint so much? (12/1/12) Good presentations are succinct. They may have a 60 page appendix, but the summary will be terse and have a point of view. Using the analogy of a tree, the presentation is the fruit. There is no reason to show off all the minutiae. You need to really boil it down to its essence. .Consulting PowerPoint Presentations: 4 Steps (12/5/12). To be clear, it is more than just making fancy graphs, but it is a large part of what we do. Executives are often very visual people. They have busy schedules and short attention spans. Sometimes, you only have 2 hours with a CXO (CEO, CFO, COO, COO, CIO, CMO) at the end of 4 month project – so you need to make sure that your presentation makes an impact.Better PowerPoint: 6 ways to make your point (4/30/12) What’s the so what?You will hear this phrase used on projects a fair amount. It is certainly not the best usage or even politely worded, but it is critical: Your presentations need to have a point . . .What is a good excel model? (11/13/12) Recently, I was given an excel model that was like the Titanic: large, slow, overly ornate, and structurally unsound. Not only was it frustrating to work with and laborious to fix, it was also a bit laughable. It did not answer even the most basic questions . . .Data analysis in 20 minutes (10/2/2014) Consultants are in the business of taking messy, unorganized data and turning it into information, and hopefully, some insights. Here is a simple example of excel clean up. . .Why consultants love best practices (6/10/12) Management consultants use the phrase “best practices” often. Perhaps too often. A few pictures that help explain why best practices are so popular with consultants and clients. . .How consultants interview clients (11/4/12) This week my team interviewed more than 20 people, everyone from VPs down to the analysts and clerks. The interviews were a gold mine of insights – especially since we were still in the early days of the project and collecting data. My throat was killing me, but these interviews helped us get our bearings on the client’s business, the personalities, and the politics. Every consulting project has interviews and here are my top interviewing tips . . .DMAIC: A great consulting tool for process improvement (4/28/12) Ask any consultant, and I mean ANY consultant (strategy, process, IT) and they will know what DMAIC stands for. It is an abbreviation for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve,Control. It is a tool often used in process improvement projects. . .SIPOC: Consulting framework to untangle problems (2/14/13) SIPOC is an ugly sounding acronym, but it is a useful way to think through problems. Clients often present consultants with complex processes that seemingly don’t have a start or a finish. Sometimes, the best thing is to stop digging. Take a step back and think through the problem. Untangle the problem in a more structured way . . .Consultant’s tool: what is a maturity model? (7/1/12) What really surprises me is that many clients have trouble explaining what is exactly wrong and what they want done. They often talk about symptoms – flat revenues, dropping margins, or increased receivables – not the root causes.A maturity model gauges the client’s maturity in a number of areas and points out the areas of improvement. It’s actually a simple thing that often looks like a report card or an excel table. It looks simple, but there is good stuff there. . .Lean means no waste. No TIMWOOD (2/11/2014) Lean is obsessively focused on doing only what is critical and what is valued by the customer. The way of thinking inherently believes in opportunity cost. You should only do what matters (to the customer). Put another way, if the customer wants 100, you should deliver 100. If you deliver 110, you wasted effort. . . The lean fundamentalist asks, “What is the customer really willing to pay for?” Anything more than that is really waste.Six Sigma: Consultants eat your own dog food (3/15/2014) Do you have boring, low-value added parts of your business that need to be standardized? By squeezing out the variability (read “craziness”) out of the process, you will be more efficient. Reduce the variability in the boring parts of your work to allow more time, freedom, and margin to innovate and deliver real value to your clients. . .Clients hire consultants to GET TO YES (12/6/12) Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In written by Roger Fisher and William Ury is perhaps the most famous book on negotiations. It’s been endorsed by people who use these lessons daily – diplomats, lawyers, and business people because this stuff works. Fortune 500 organizations have a terrible time implementing these simple things and, as a result, often hire management consultant for help . . .Consulting advice: Help your clients save face (4/4/14) This is a simple concept that is critical for consultants and sales people to understand. Never put your client in a situation where you are directly and publicly disagreeing with them. Never box them into a corner where they might be ashamed of the situation. Never embarrass them. It’s a very Asian business culture concept of harmony, and it is super-applicable to consultants. Some of the most deadly phrases . . .How consultants do industry research (5/12/12) Management consultants need to be quick learners. Junior analysts are routinely asked to support proposals and projects across different industries. The good ones are fast, and proficient with Excel and PowerPoint. The great ones get up-to-speed quickly on the industry dynamics and can add in industry specifics to the pitch. . .4 reasons why management consultants love data (4/15/12). Management consultants are always on the prowl for good data. After all, it is the stuff that client recommendations are made of. To a cynic, it might seem obvious. The title of this post would be a kin to: “Why chefs love ingredients” or “Why district attorneys like evidence” or “Why gardeners like sunlight.” Even so, what exactly about the data do consultants love so much?Saying YES to clients can get consultants in trouble (8/29/12) When the client asks for something – new research, some ad-hoc analysis, an extra workshop – it usually seems like a reasonable request. After all, they pay the bills and shouldn’t they get the most out of their consultants, right? Experienced consultants and lawyers will tell you there are many reasons why being overly agreeable can create problems. . .Pauses: a consultant’s public speaking tip (4/20/12) Good speakers pause. After they finish one thought, they don’t rush to the next sentence. They don’t rattle off useless verbal fillers (uh, ah, um, well, so, right, hmm). Instead, they embrace that millisecond of silence, harness the awkwardness, and force the listener to pay attention. Many people call it the pregnant pause. . .What is scope creep? (1/29/13) Generally, this means that the client wants more work done for the same amount of money. It’s not pretty and it’s no surprise that consultants dread it. It usually means late nights, grumpy analysts, dissatisfied clients, and potentially lower project margins. All bad things. . .Structuring problems: Consultants use buckets (05/16/13) Consultants use buckets. I know it sounds pedestrian and unsophisticated, but it’s harder than it looks. When you are trying to crack a complex problem, inevitably you will start to group things. Structuring problems forces you to organize your thoughts, and reflect on what your key messages will be. It is the first step in turning data into insights.Frameworks: Distill your thoughts until they are 80 proof (1/21/14) Consultants are structured thinkers. They may not have as intuitive a grasp on the topic as the client – after all, the client has been living in this field their entire life – but consultants excel at piecing together bits and pieces of data until it starts forming an outline of a story. . . .The best short-answer to give clients? It depends (5/13/2013) “It depends” is a phrase you hear a lot in both business school and management consulting. To some, it might seem like a boring half-answer, timid, or worse – mentally lazy. As weird as it might seem, it is often the best short-answer to give a client.Cracking the case interview (8/11/2013) This format of interviewing is tough, but also a lot of fun. The interviewer gives you the problem and background, and it is up to the candidate to think through the problem, and selectively ask questions to solicit the information needed to get to a solution. 70% IQ, 30% EQ.Resumes are bait (11/7/13) I was on the recruiting team at a Big 4 consulting, and we looked through hundreds of resumes every year and 90% of them went into the trash. We probably spent less than 15 seconds on a cover letter and 30 seconds on a resume. Basically, the resume review was quick and violent.The way I see it, the entire purpose of a resume is to get invited for an interview. Period. Getting an interview means the fish took a bite at the bait. Resumes = bait.Finders, Minders, and Grinders (1/28/14) Managing a Professional Services Firm by David Maister is a consulting classic. For those interested in the economics of partnerships and want to know how managing partners think of their business model, you have to read this book. There are three archetypal roles that roughly line up with these job titles in the respective industries. . . finders (partners, principals), minders (senior managers, managers), and grinders (senior consultant, consultant, analysts)Consultant, what’s your leverage model? (3/16/2014) Leverage is how consulting firms make money. As I discussed in a previous post, professional services firms – lawyers, accountants, marketers, consultants – are built on organizational pyramid structures. There are fewer partners than analysts, no surprise. The ratio of finders, minders, and grinders (senior, middle, junior resources) affects the types of projects they can handle and also their profitability. . .18 excel modeling tips. (12/11/2015) This week I coached a new consultant in creating an excel model. Here are some of the words of advice I gave him. I wish I knew these pointers 20 years ago. . .Consulting proposals: 12 common mistakes. (12/19/2014) . In consulting, writing proposals and statements of work are the lifeblood of the firm. It is akin to fisherman throwing out nets, or farmers planting seeds. If you are not putting together proposals and pitching potential clients, you are dead. . . .Competitive Intelligence 20 tips (10/28/2014): When I was working overseas, I was on a competitive intelligence project. It might sound super-crafty, and Mission-Impossible, but it was not. It was actually quite boring. Lots of meetings to share information, and try to piece together the competition’s strategy and tactics. Very ethical and process-driven initiative.Data Analysis in 20 minutes (10/2/2014). Consultants are in the business of taking messy, unorganized data and turning it into information, and hopefully, some insights. Here is a simple example of excel clean up, and the steps to copy, paste, filter, sort, and cleanse data. For most consultants, the data cleansing would 7-10 minutes (takes some trial and error) and the graphics would be another 10 minutes, if (s)he knew what graph they wanted to make. . .Consulting formula: Think + write + communicate + revise (8/04/2014) On a large project with so many moving parts, people, stakeholders, and organizational history that I sometimes get lost in the activities, status reports and project management mess. Stop. I need to come back to the basics of consulting. This post is written to myself, for myself. Gotta get back to basics:IT implementation worst practices: healthcare.gov (11/3/2013) IT implementation is “bread and butter work” for consulting firms. It often involves dozens of consultants, multiple locations, and sometimes 2-3 years for a full roll out of an enterprise resource plan (ERP) like SAP or Oracle. These are big hairy projects that cost dozens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars. It’s big money.What is RACI? (05/18/2015) This is a tool consultants use on any project which requires clear definition of roles and more communication on a new process. When you have more than a handful of people involved, it’s very easy to get confused and make incorrect assumptions on who is doing what. Confusion = frustration = lack of adoption = failure.

Degrees don't get old. Ok the knowledge and experience in some of the more technical ones like IT might get obsolete but that is what continual professional development is supposed to be all about... You can do things to keep the knowledge current. This can include keeping an eye on any professional journals, attending conferences and even just browsing the web for articles related to your field. I do remember one IT professional friend saying that, 9 times out of 10, when an IT techie is looking at an issue they will end up googling the problem and doing things like check the Microsoft techie forums.Your degree gives you three things.1) The basic background knowledge of the field you are studying. Which, as stated above, can change at a varying speed depending on the topic (decades for something like History, years for Medicine, months for IT) but without that basic grounding you will never keep up in the first place.2) Academic/technical skills. These never change. How to do research, how to communicate, how to write a report or essay, how to think like a member of your profession. OK the means used to research have changed since I was at university (20 years ago) because we no longer use index cards in libraries but I use the same basic method to find and use sources on the internet as I used in that library.3) A degree. Regardless of how long ago it was, what the subject is etc. A degree is a degree is a degree and it shows an employer that you have some or all of the skills above. You don't have to work in your area of expertise either. In fact, from what I have observed, unless you go into academia or have done a vocational degree that leads to a specific job role (medicine, law, pharmacy) you are more likely to enter the workforce in an area not in your area of expertise (for example, having a degree in sociology and getting a job in a bank). Just having a degree can sometimes swing it and I have friends who, as soon as they got their degree, were offered roles on the management track of the job they were doing to pay the bills during university.As for getting a job... the first thing is to get a killer CV that really sells you. You need to highlight the things that make you appropriate for the specific job. Now I know there is a difference between US and UK here - we prefer a detailed CV with a personal statement outlining why you should have this job whereas US has a one page resume idea - but still look at how your first impressions on paper come across. Application forms, cover letters and CVs are all things you need to perfect in order to get past the first barrier.If you get offered an interview, this is usually a good sign that they know you are capable of doing the job and just want to see if they like you or not. Again, first impressions are huge here. How you dress, how you act. What you do if you are going to be late. Being aware of the nature of the questions being asked (knowing what sort of answer to give to questions like 'if you are a biscuit, what would you be?'). You can do research on interview techniques, including answers for some of the common questions, and also look at the things some companies do such as set interview tasks (presentations, roleplays), IQ or other aptitude tests and so on. These can be specific to a particular field so make sure you narrow your research down.Finally, be aware that it is tough in the current economy. Companies are not hiring as much as they used to and long term contracts are rare. You might have to take what you can and hope to build experience for better jobs. Be prepared to start at the very bottom and, since you rarely get the same internal progression you used to get (where you started in the mailroom and were CEO by the time you were 60), keep an eye on the job market for better jobs - it is easier to move up by changing jobs frequently. You can look at interim stuff like personal tuition in the area you got your degree in to make money while you look (which is what I did and how I ended up a teacher eventually).